Thursday, April 10, 2014

"Hurray, The Rattles Are Here!"

At first (and second, and third) listen, Germany's The Rattles sound like a Beatles clone. And a particularly bizarre and hilarious one, at that. But as our man in Scotland, Count Otto Black, points out: "German beat groups like the Rattles weren't necessarily imitating the Beatles as such. Rather, the Merseybeat sound in general was extremely popular in Germany, and the Beatles were hired to play in Hamburg for that reason. So both the Beatles and the Rattles were trying to jump on the same bandwagon independently of one another. Though of course the Beatles always had a big advantage in that their accents never slipped. It appears that the Rattles already sounded as though they were a deliberate Beatles clone long before the Beatles were famous enough to be worth ripping off...the Beatles were but one of many similar groups, only they happened to have that extra something. Or maybe they just got lucky - most of their rivals made no recordings so we'll never know."By the time of this 1965 recording, The Beatles were of course well established, and at least one song, "A Lonely Man," strongly suggests "She's A Woman," so maybe they had circled all the way around to intentionally imitating the Beatles. Still, there are some pretty deranged moments here that should clue anyone in that we are most def not dealing with those mop-tops from Liverpool: a version of Doris Day's wistful ballad "Que Sera Sera" performed like a live mashup with "La Bamba," a highly energetic Bing Crosby (?!) cover, "Swinging On A Star", and a version of "Rockin' Pneumonia" that they pronounce "Rockin' Pumonia." But amidst all the unintentional laffs, there's still plenty of genuinely high-energy good rockin' tonight.Die Rattles - "Hurra Die Rattles Kommen!"